ALTINA

Born in a New York mansion to a Sephardic tobacco tycoon from Turkey, Altina Schinasi (1907-1999) quickly eclipsed her guarded childhood to make sexually liberated art with a flagrant audacity that became the trademark of a life lived to the fullest. She picked up an Oscar nomination for directing Interregnum, a film on George Grosz; befriended Martin Luther King Jr.; and hid a member of the Hollywood Ten during the Red Scare. These relationships, and those with four wildly different husbands, informed her most original artwork&mdash;Chairacter-sculptures that exuded the unencumbered sexuality of a feminist born before women had the right to vote.